


new game+

by SoVeryAverageMe



Category: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Genre: Aftermath of the Whole Jumanji Thing, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gen, High School, It's Basically a Modified Monday Morning Breakfast Club Fic, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Spencer has a lot of mixed feelings about the Jumanji Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:29:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoVeryAverageMe/pseuds/SoVeryAverageMe
Summary: This isn't a story about adventures or heroes or saving the world. It's not some epic or a story that will be passed down for generations.Instead, it's about trying to reconcile who they were with who they have become. It's about friendship and high school and everything else. This is about the Day After.And the lifetime it will become.





	new game+

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribbledmargins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribbledmargins/gifts).



> I think that this retcons a little bit of the epilogue scene at the end of the movie, but just go along with it. 
> 
> It's been a while since I've watched the movie, so I may have slipped up on some other small details too. (lol I definitely had to Google the name of their high school). 
> 
> Regardless, I hope you enjoy!

High school was weird on the best of days. A social experiment, a war of attrition, and the basis for the rest of their lives played out inside the confined walls of a classroom.

For most students at Brantford High School, it was just another day in their very boring small town, but for Spencer, Fridge, Bethany, and Martha it felt like another life.

It was another life.

* * *

Spencer was running late. As soon as he got home yesterday, he had fallen asleep in his clothes. He had missed his first alarm, having been exhausted after everything that had happened.

Sloppily scooping cereal into his mouth with one hand, he wrote answers to his chemistry homework with the other. It was completely unfair that he could save an entire world on one day and possibly get berated for forgetting his homework the next.

He scribbled some unintelligible answers on the bottom, hoping that his teacher wouldn’t look too closely at it before shoving the worksheet into his backpack. Pulling on a coat, he grabbed his bag and phone, before running out of the house, barely remembering to lock the door behind him.

The bus driver took mercy on him and waited at the corner when they saw Spencer wildly waving his arms. He slipped onto the bus, taking a seat in the middle. He was far enough back to be invisible to the general population, but not far enough back to be caught in the morning chaos.

He replied to a text from his parents and told them that he managed to catch the bus. His lips quirked up in a small smile when he saw the group chat that had been created last night. It had gone quiet as they had fallen asleep. He couldn’t quite get up the courage to reply and break whatever careful balance had been formed since the return from Jumanji.

He slipped off the bus in relative anonymity and scanned the front lawn of the school. The usual suspects were out and about, but no one that he was looking for. Meandering up the steps to the school, he startled has he felt an arm suddenly come around his shoulders.

“Chill,” Fridge said. “It’s just me.”

“Sorry.” Spencer shook his head, shrugging off the other boy’s arm. “I guess I’m still a little on edge from…”

“The whole trapped in a video game with a thousand things trying to kill us?”

He couldn’t help the laughter that escaped. “Yeah. That.”

They wandered down the halls, making small talk. Every time the conversation tilted toward Jumanji, they would steer away from it, both not quite ready to relive their experiences. The two barely managed to slip into class right before the bell rang, sliding into the last two seats available at the back of the classroom.

Their teacher spent the entire class period explaining a short term research project that would be due and the end of the month, and Spencer could barely take notes fast enough to cope with the sheer amount of information overload. When the bell rangs he took a breath and laid his head on his desk to rest for a moment.

His eyes closed and he heard students exiting the classroom, before being startled by a tap on the shoulder. “You okay?” He opened a single eye and saw Fridge looking down at him, a slightly worried look on his face.

“Sometimes it felt easier in the game,” Spencer sighed, getting up and grabbing his bag. He started walking toward the cafeteria, with Fridge following along.

“Dude!” Fridge knocked his shoulder. Spencer subconsciously braced himself for the impact before realizing that it was meant in a joking manner. He didn’t recover quickly enough to escape Fridge’s notice, but the other boy chose not to say anything. “You know we literally almost died in that game, right? Like, gone forever. That’s the end. _Dead._ ”

“It was exciting, though.” Spencer pursed his lips and helplessly shrugged. “It was nice being a hero. Feeling like we were powerful.”

“If that’s what being a hero is, then being a hero is overrated.” Fridge scoffed. “And powerful? We were being manipulated by an evil video game to complete pre-determined quests. In the end, it was all ones and zeroes. I much rather have my free will than some manufactured power.”

Spencer stopped walking and stared, a curious look on his face. He opened his mouth several times to respond, but no sound came out. Fridge shook his head and threw an arm around his shoulder, pulling him along. “For a smart kid, you sure can be dumb sometimes.”  

They paused when they arrived at the double doors of the cafeteria, both unsure of where they stood. It was one thing to talk in the mornings or catch each other after class. There was something hallowed about lunch.

He was about to tell Fridge that they could just go back to normal, even though he knew that nothing would ever be normal again. Even so, it wasn’t like they _had_ to be friends. He was shaken out of his thoughts by a shout of their names.

Martha and Bethany were waving at them from a table at the very center of the lunch room. They leaned into each other to speak, laughing about some inside joke that no one else would understand.

Fridge looked at him and shrugged, before zigzagging between the tables toward the girls. Spencer leaned against the doorframe, looking around at the rest of the students.

He wanted nothing more to scream at the top of his lungs about how their lives were nothing. That the world was magic and they would never know. That no one would every understand.

Then his eyes fell back on the center table. Martha looked like she was about to come marching up to him and drag him there herself if he didn’t hurry. He shook his head and smiled.

After all, there were _some people_ who understood.

* * *

 The students of Brantford High School looked up curiously at the group of four students in the center of the cafeteria. It was like they were entirely different people from who they were yesterday.

For most students, they figured that they must have just missed a bit of yesterday’s gossip that made everything make sense. Others were too busy trying to cobble together their own social lives to deal with anyone else.

In the end, it didn’t matter to them because, hey, it’s just high school. And high school was weird anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> This whole fic is a little bit messier than intended and super experimental in tone in some parts, but it was definitely fun to play around in a the world for a bit. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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